Characteristics of sexual-reproductive health in urban areas of Romania

Romanian people are still feeling the influence of the aggressive pro birth policy of the communist regime, despite the important political, social and economical changes occurred in the country after 1990. Within the framework of a Romanian Academy Grant, we managed a national study to put into evidence the present characteristics of the sexual-reproductive health of Romanians. We applied a questionnaire with 90 items on 1902 subjects over the age of 15, equally distributed by sex, living in urban areas of the eight traditional historical geographical regions of the country. Data analysis suggests the followings: (1) young people postpone the moments of getting married and having children especially from professional training and financial reasons. A significant natality increase and a positive natural increase seem not to be possible in the next five years (in the 25-34 age group 64.4% of the subjects have no children; about ¼ of the total number of subjects do not wish the second child); (2) age of first sexual intercourse has decreased, from an average of 19.73 years over the age of 50 to 17.01 years in the 15-24 age group; (3) first sexual contact was not protected for 61.5% of the respondents, but the percent differences between the age groups are statistically significant (89.8% over the age of 60, 37.7% at the 15-19 age group); (4) a percentage of 52.9 subjects (most of them in the 25-34 and 35-49 age groups) use contraceptive methods; they prefer condoms, pills or calendar.